This is just unbelievably awful. The news reports are all so contradictory, but in the past hour Reuters, BBC, and Fox are all reporting at least 80 dead. Last I checked, CNN was still saying 17.

How does one person shoot and kill 80 people? Earlier reports said he had a hand gun, but it had to have been an automatic weapon, I'm assuming. I'm also assuming that most of the victims are children? I can't even fathom this.

One report says a jihadist group claimed responsibility, another says the shooter is linked to home grown anti-Muslim groups. Reuters had stories mentioning both.

This is giving me flashbacks to Virginia Tech. I'm not going to sleep well tonight. I need Molly snuggles.

The world sucks. There are only so many cute puppies and rainbow kittens.

_________________"This is the creepiest post ever if you don't know who Molly is." -Fee"a vegan death match sounds like something where we all end up hugging." -LisaPunk

The NY Times has reported that the shooter / bomber is a Norwegian right wing extremist.

_________________A whole lot of access and privilege goes into being sanctimonious pricks J-DubDessert is currently a big bowl of sanctimonious, passive aggressive vegan enduced boak. FezzaYou people are way less funny than Pandacookie. Sucks to be you.-interrobang?!

I got a news alert from NY Times. So sad; prayers/thoughts with Norway.

_________________I would eat Dr. Cow pocket cheese in a second. I would eat it if you hid it under your hat, or in your backpack, but not if it was in your shoe. That's where I draw the line. -allularpunk

My Norwegian's fairly rusty, but from what I can glean from the Norwegian newspaper sites, no-one's talking about any Islamic terrorism angle anymore. I read one article from the Guardian that acknowledged that all the evidence seemed to be pointing to one lone (possibly rightwing) attacker, but then continued to discuss Islamic terrorism for the next half page.

My Norwegian's fairly rusty, but from what I can glean from the Norwegian newspaper sites, no-one's talking about any Islamic terrorism angle anymore. I read one article from the Guardian that acknowledged that all the evidence seemed to be pointing to one lone (possibly rightwing) attacker, but then continued to discuss Islamic terrorism for the next half page.

I watched the Norwegian news yesterday for about two hours and all the authorities were pretty careful in their wording. Nobody talked about an Islamic terrorist attack as far as I could understand. The attacker, who seems to be responsible both for the bomb and the shooting at Utøya seems to have expressed rightwing opinions and in a Dagsavisen article it says that he has expressed anti-islamic views. The bomb hit the building where prime minister Stoltenberg has his office. He was also supposed to visit the Socialist Party's youth camp on Utøya today or tomorrow that was attacked.

The police say they don't want to speculate about his motifs yet, as they just started the investigation.

it is so unimaginable horrible. according to danish media (Politiken the man is a norwegian nationalist. i can't even begin to describe how forking horrible this is..to a certain point i can understand people from suppressed groups who react to that, or fight for freedom or equality. no matter how horrible it is, i can UNDERSTAND the motive.but this is a white man, he's probably heterosexual (otherwise someone would probably have mentioned it now, i am fairly certain) and he lives in one of the richest countries in the world. what freedom is he fighting for? the one where other people have to die because he want MORE? that really doesn't sit right with me.

This is not very surprising, although horrible. There's a wave of facism in Europe right now, and it manifests pretty much everywhere, Scandinavia is no exeption. This man seems to be on the very right nationalistic side politically, and those parties have been getting a lot more votes and room in the Scandinavian countries lately. Of course, that will lead to action. All we can do is to fight facism in whatever form it takes.

It's so awful, when the news broke last night we couldn't believe it, the whole thing just kept getting worse and worse in scale. My heart goes out to everyone. I feel sick thinking about the poor teenagers at the youth camp, that must have been unbelievably terrifying.

This is not very surprising, although horrible. There's a wave of facism in Europe right now, and it manifests pretty much everywhere, Scandinavia is no exeption. This man seems to be on the very right nationalistic side politically, and those parties have been getting a lot more votes and room in the Scandinavian countries lately. Of course, that will lead to action. All we can do is to fight facism in whatever form it takes.

This is horrible, but we can't just be sad, we have to fight.

I'm sorry for the people who died on the campsite/Island, it's not clear to me if the bomb in Oslo is also done by this man.

On the other hand, I do feel some kind of ... perhaps relief isn't the right word for it...that it's not some one in the name of Islam of Jihad.

As pannkakan says, we see more fascism and racism in europe, which leads to more (extreme) right wing parties and right wing/conservative governments.

I live on the Swedish west coast, near Oslo, and many Norweigans live here. Our neighbors are from Norway and there are many flags flying at half mast here today. My thoughts are with the victims and their families. I can't believe this has happened here.

The part that makes me so sick is that Anders Behring Breivik, the man arrested in connection with the shootings at Uttøya and the explosions in Oslo, a rightwing extremist, posted his one and only message on Twitter, a version of a quote by John Stuart Mill: "One person with a belief is equal to the force of 100 000 who have only interests."

The self-righteousness in that line is really shocking - he really thinks that his beliefs about immigration etc trump those of so many of his victims.

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Kids. I have a kid. Too much hate. I love everybody. The world needs to take a break. I'm calling a forking time out. We need to help each other because the world has real problems and our fists are just not helping.

_________________"Adam wore a fur kilt and had a bad 70's perm? He also appears to wearing a pair of Mammoth Crocs. I had hoped the Father of Humanity was cooler than that." - Sluggie

I can't help but be further disgusted (as if you could be from a story like this) at how a number of media outlets tried so effing hard to connect this to Islam and Al-Qaeda. Not just FOX news - NY Times, Washington Post, etc. This article does a great job of breaking down how media outlets scrambled to change their stories when it became clear he was a blonde, Christian, Nordic guy:

As more details come out about what it was like on that island, I get sick. The idea that he arrived and first asked the other kids to bring everyone together for an "important meeting" - just so he could get them all in one place for their executions - makes me sick.

Statistically based on the population of Norway, this loss is the equivalent of the U.S. losing more than twice the amount of people it did on 9/11. It's terrible.

It didn't take more than a minute after the first news, before people started talking about what islamistic organisation was behind this. But when it was obvious that it was a white right-wing man, the discussion turned into one about a lonely maniac. Everyone stopped discussing politics.

This is a political act. It's one of the worst things done to the working class movement since forever, and it must be seen as such and action against right wing movements and facism must be taken.